Have you ever done an experiment during quarantine,if so what was the experiment?

Manuel Kober-Czerny answered on 11 Jan 2021:

I normally work in a laboratory where I have to wear a full-body protection and I couldn’t do that at home. There is a lot of stuff you can do outside of the lab (during quarantine), like reading about Science, looking at what you have done and planning new experiments.
So I haven’t done an experiment during quarantine, but I have experimented with cooking 😉

William Smith answered on 11 Jan 2021:

As a computer scientist, I’m really lucky – a lot of my experimental work needs only my computer (or sometimes access to a more powerful server, but I can still do this from home). Obviously data collection can’t be done at home but modelling, simulation, computation in general can be done remotely. So, I’ve been able to run lots of experiments while working from home during the pandemic. The 3D glacier model that’s in the video in my profile was computed from home during the lockdown!

Freija Mendrik answered on 11 Jan 2021:

Sort of! I’m currently running experiments in the lab looking at what affects how microplastics (plastics smaller than 5mm) are transported. The type of plastic as well as water salinity and other factors will change how microplastics move. This is really important to understand if we are wanting to predict where microplastics end up in our ocean! During the first lockdown I was able to build and test different setups at home. Now I am able to be back in the lab I can run the experiments properly!

Michael Sulu answered on 11 Jan 2021:

I am still working through lockdown and in the lab quite a lot, I have made some biopesticides from fungi, made some vaccines for pneumonia, helped make a flu vaccine, and also help use bacteria to make a glass!

Stephanie Henson answered on 12 Jan 2021:

No I haven’t, although many of my co-workers still have to go into the lab or engineering workshops. Most of my work involves using data we’ve already collected – either on research voyages, from underwater robots, from Earth-orbiting satellites, or model simulations. So I’ve been able to catch up on lots of data analysis and reading!

Graham Shields answered on 12 Jan 2021:

This is a really good question. I have spent my lockdown mostly writing, and used the laboratories when they are open. So the answer has to be no. Having said that, we can control some of the machines remotely but someone needs to check up on them once per day. Those experiments were to look at the chemistry of past oceans.

Savanna van Mesdag answered on 12 Jan 2021:

While I have not been able to do experiments at home, I have been able to do much research from home, including reading papers, working on data that I have already collected and reading nature ID books that will help me when I can go out into the field (a steel byproduct site near Glasgow) and identify different types of plants and invertebrates (including insects) on-site. If I cannot actually go out into the field, I can do a great deal to prepare myself for good, robust fieldwork! If I cannot go into the lab, I’m luckily able to look at data that I have already been able to collect as a result of labwork. I can also think about the type of labwork that I can do in the future, when I am able to go back into my university lab again.

Will Ingram answered on 12 Jan 2021:

I’m currently organising Fuel Cell tests that will be done in our laboratories over the next 2 years – these mostly involve stressing our tech in different ways to see when it fails. The plan is a group effort between engineers, scientists, test technicians, suppliers and project managers – and most of us never see or touch the actual experiment. Just send off the set-points and receive the data later as it gets produced. Then when we do manage to break things, everyone gets in a virtual room and does ‘root cause analysis’ to see why it failed and therefore how the design can be improved.

Polly Keen answered on 12 Jan 2021:

An experiment is made up of lots of tasks; researching (finding out what’s already known), planning what to do, doing the experiment, analysing the results (working out what the experiment actually showed us), then working out what to do next. All the tasks except actually “doing” can be done out of the lab (so at home during quarantine).

Jenny Shepperson answered on 12 Jan 2021:

Most of my research is done on the computer, so I don’t often work in a laboratory for my scientific research – but before Christmas we were teaching students how to do some experiments still. Some of our students dissected some fish, so that they could learn about their biology – all of the science is still the same, but its a bit different being in a laboratory with everyone being really spaced out, wearing face masks, and having big plastic screens around everywhere to protect everyone!

Malcolm Holley answered on 12 Jan 2021:

Here at the University of Bath some of our computer scientists are looking at how robots and humans can work together. So some of them have taken the robots home ( there’re not huge ones) and can do the experiments with them safely at home. So at least the robots and scientists won’t get lonely during lockdown. But we have asked them to be careful as they are quite expensive.
I think some our postgraduates might be trying to train the robots to walk their dogs!

Liam Taylor answered on 12 Jan 2021:

Yes! A bit like Will, I can work on images from satellites to study glaciers instead of having to go to them. I’ve been taking lots of images from the last few years to work out whether ice is melting faster or slower (sadly, the answer is faster). Of course, it’s much much easier to study something you are in front of, but this will have to do for the moment.

Helena Brown answered on 12 Jan 2021:

Unfortunately the experiments I usually help with require heavy and delicate equipment which I can’t bring home. I haven’t done any experiments from home except for experimenting with my cooking!
Jemma Neumann, one of the demo creators for the Christmas Lectures, has made a calendar which has a new experiment for each month that you can do at home. I can highly recommend it.

Lin Marvin answered on 12 Jan 2021:

I work in a laboratory with equipment that is not possible to work remotely. During the initial lockdown I worked from home doing background reading on techniques or updating safety documentation. In a way it was good to catch up on these jobs. I have been working continuously in the lab since July where I look after analytical equipment so have been doing that as normal.

Sophie Gill answered on 12 Jan 2021:

Yes! My lab wasn’t open during the first UK lockdown, but was open during the second one in November. I managed to get some experiments on the ratio of ocean plankton’s organic carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) measurements completed, which involved growing lots of plankton in flasks and keeping them in a fancy temperature-controlled fridge called an incubator. Then I filtered the seawater containing the plankton and measured the C:N:P ratio of the organic matter, using spectrophotometry – measuring colour changes from chemical reactions to tell us how much C, N and P there was in a sample.

Lizzie Driscoll answered on 12 Jan 2021:

Last year with the first lockdown, we had to close our labs from March to July. Since July I’ve been in the lab every other week, with half the people I work with (we’ve had to reduce the amount of us in in one time). I’ve still been busy working in the labs, making new materials and new batteries. But when working from home, there’s still work I can do – such as plot my results and work out the next steps of research.

The big differences working during this time is I have to wear a mask, with my lab coat and goggles, and I see less of my lab partners and have to ensure a 2 m distance. So the office and labs are a lot quieter.

Alistair Young answered on 12 Jan 2021:

We don’t do much ‘experimenting’, but do things like testing water quality. During Lockdown we have been able to continue testing the state of the river with tests of how acid or alkaline (pH) the water is which indicates where there is a problem. Because we can’t have groups of people though, the kick tests which looks at how many invertebrates – larvae and mini bugs – are in a particular part of the river have not been happening. Kick testing tells more about the health of the river and its environment than just the water quality test.

Kirstie Wright answered on 12 Jan 2021:

Yes, I have been learning to code for my research and to run models of tsunamis! This has involved collecting lots of numerical data and learning how to run this in special programmes that work out how a landslide will create a tsunami and how the wave will move depending on its size and location.

Eleanor Frajka-Williams answered on 12 Jan 2021:

I am currently at sea on the RRS Discovery doing an experiment in the North Atlantic. We’ve been on the ship since December 8. We’re measuring whether the ocean circulation is speeding up or slowing down. Because of the Covid situation when we left the UK, all participants in the expedition had 2 covid tests (all negative), and also socially distanced for the first 14 days of the cruise.

Katy Chamberlain answered on 12 Jan 2021:

I have only run a few experiments- mainly looking at crystals with a very powerful microscope, so I do not have to be near anyone else. But- mostly I have been at home, reading other peoples scientific papers, and writing my own, as well as teaching my university classes!

Amy Stockwell answered on 12 Jan 2021:

I’m lucky that most of my work is done on the computer. But I have seen videos of some of my colleagues building and testing equipment on their dining tables. Their families have been very annoyed that they have nowhere to eat dinner.

Beth Clark answered on 13 Jan 2021:

I haven’t been in to the lab since the start of lockdown, but I have been doing some small experiments at home that were safe to do outside of the lab (they didn’t involve any chemicals or other potentially hazardous things). So I have been “reading” fish otoliths. Otoliths are little ear bones in fish and they are really useful because like trees, they have rings which can tell us how old the fish are. The otoliths that I am looking at are from a deep water fish called Gonostoma and they are about the size of a half a grain of rice. Some fish have yearly growth rings on their otoliths, but because Gonostoma are migratory (meaning they live in the deep water during the day but swim to shallower water at night) they have daily growth rings – so it is a lot of counting!

Aythya Young answered on 13 Jan 2021:

I am lucky that i have been allowed to go into the lab to look at beetles all summer. I am also hopefully going to set up a microscope in my own flat so i am able to continue with my work even during this lockdown!

Michael Nolan answered on 18 Jan 2021:

I was not allowed to my office between March and July 2020, so was unable to actually do any computer experiments (my laptop is too weak to run the software). Luckily my role and industry research meant I got an exception to the restrictions and was allowed to my main computer. Spent 4 months doing lots of nice computer experiments and then ran into the new lockdown. So I am pausing my experiments while I work with my group on analysis our results.

Question: Have you ever done an experiment during quarantine,if so what was the experiment?

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